on of his head flashed out
the "Look of Fate." The old tragedian with a gray beard assumed a
stoical expression, and did not forget to "vibrate" in pronouncing a
masculine "Courage!" The clown approached with a short, trotting step,
and shaking his head until his cheeks trembled, he murmured, "My poor
old fellow." And the fairy queen, with the sensibility of a sensitive
female, threw herself impulsively on the neck of the unhappy father,
who, with swollen face, bloodshot eyes, and hanging lip, blackened his
face and his gloved hands with the dye of his mustache, diluted by
tears.

And all the time, a few steps from this grotesque and sinister scene, we
could see--last word of this antithesis--the white figures of the young
girls of the sisterhood, kneeling on the chairs nearest the coffin of
their companion, and who undoubtedly were beseeching God, in their
naive and original prayers, to grant her the paradise of their dreams:
a pretty paradise in the Jesuitical style, all in carved and gilded
wood, and many-colored marble, where one could see at the end a tableau
in a transparent light; the Virgin crowned with stars, with a serpent
under her feet, while little cherubs suspended in mid-air over her head
an azure streamer flaming with these words: "_Ecce Regina Angelorum._"

[Illustration]

THE SUBSTITUTE.

[Illustration: THE SUBSTITUTE]

He was scarcely ten years old when he was first arrested as a vagabond.

He spoke thus to the judge:

"I am called Jean Francois Leturc, and for six months I was with the
man who sings and plays upon a cord of catgut between the lanterns at
the Place de la Bastille. I sang the refrain with him, and after that I
called, 'Here's all the new songs, ten centimes, two sous!' He was
always drunk, and used to beat me. That is why the police picked me up
the other night. Before that I was with the man who sells brushes. My
mother was a laundress; her name was Adele. At one time she lived with
a man on the ground-floor at Montmartre. She was a good work-woman and
liked me. She made money because she had for customers waiters in the
cafes, and they use a good deal of linen. On Sundays she used to put me
to bed early so that she could go to the ball. On week-days she sent me
to Les Freres, where I learned to read. Well, the sergeant-de-ville
whose beat was in our street used always to stop before our windows to
talk with her--a good-looking chap, with a medal from the Crimea. They